Twenty-four
by Once Upon a Whim
Summary: Because when Lucy is ok, Lucy is prompt, Lucy is punctual, Lucy is on time. But no, Wyatt, Lucy is not ok. [set during 'Karma Chameleon']


**You didn't think I could just give them all the shmoopy happiness of 'Firsts and Seconds' without something miserable to balance it out, did you? Unfortunately for her, Lucy gets the brunt of it this time. Although to be fair, it's not actually my doing; I'm just elaborating on what the writers did to her. Minimal editing here, sorry; yay for angsty, incoherent rambling on my part.**

* * *

The tears threaten when she sits unsteadily on the stairs in front of him, but they don't come.

The tears don't come when she closes the door.

They also don't come when she when she climbs the stairs back to her room.

Nor do they come when she plucks her phone up off the bedside table to obediently note the time for the head start that Wyatt had requested.

No, they come as soon as she sets the phone back down, left with nothing to do for twenty minutes but stew in her own thoughts. That's when they come. They come immediately.

And though the first phase is just spillover onto her cheeks, Lucy knows herself well enough that the pitiful, hiccupping, body-shaking awfulness isn't far away, and she can't risk waking her mother and having to explain. Hell, she's not even sure she has an entirely rational explanation for _herself_. So she grabs the phone and, just as she'd done not ten minutes earlier, dashes down the stairs. Except this time, she passes the front door and heads into the living room to shakily sit on the couch.

 _That's_ when the real tears come. Her body shakes with the onslaught of gut-wrenching sobs.

Why did it feel like they were saying goodbye? Because they _were._

He'll come back and have Jessica.

Jessica will have _him_.

And Rufus and Jiya will still have each other, Agent Christopher will still have her family, her mother will still have her all-important prestigious career…

What will she, left-behind Lucy, have? Nothing. Certainly not Wyatt. Certainly not Amy. Not the mother she remembers. Not tenure. She won't even have _Noah_ , whose last name she still doesn't even know, but at least he loved her, which is something? Kind of?

But possibly the worst thing about all of this is that she might not even have the _memories_ of Wyatt, nothing from anything they've been through in this timeline. No holding hands after Lincoln, no dragging him out of the Alamo, no talking in bed in Arkansas... No kiss.

And that's the kicker, isn't it? The fact that the kiss matters? Because if all that were true, her memories of Rufus will also be altered. If Wyatt had been _different_ , married to Jessica, wouldn't the argument in the hotel room between all three of them about saving Lincoln have been different? If Wyatt had always been married, would she have written a journal for Flynn to get, to hold over their heads in 70s DC, to send her and Rufus off to chase the doc? If Wyatt had been married, a _husband_ , would she have flung herself at him in the hotel in Chicago, or maybe gone to Rufus first? Called for Rufus when Flynn was dragging her away to the Mothership?

Except in this moment, Lucy doesn't give a rat's ass about whether she'll have those memories of Rufus. It's Wyatt that she's bawling about.

The thought strikes her with alarming clarity. Oh god, she'd gone and let herself fall in love with him, didn't she?

Her shoulders shake anew as a fresh wave of hot tears races down her cheeks. Well, that would explain why his admission at the door that nothing else mattered, that it would all be worth it if Jessica was back, had felt like he'd physically kicked her in the chest.

Because she's in love with him and it doesn't matter. _She_ doesn't matter. To him. Not compared to Jessica.

For a split second she wonders if maybe it's better that he's going to erase all of these sudden feelings when he resets the timeline. But no, as hard as it would be to have feelings for him when he was back with Jessica, it's worse thinking she'll have known a completely different version of him the whole time and won't even have the memories to hang on to.

Or, she realizes, dread sinking in, will she even know him at all?

With five more years with Jessica, would he still be taking on Delta Force missions? Hadn't he said Jessica had wanted a son? They'd have had one by now, wouldn't they? Or a little girl? Or more? Would they have ever even put him on the team, knowing he had a wife and a family? Or would she and Rufus have been bouncing around through time with some stranger, some random guy, another soldier as sadly single as she is?

And now her weeping turns bitter and angry, and not even for her, but on Jessica's behalf. It was all worth it? What, he's not even on the team, he's supposed to be a married family guy not even on the project, and he's going to come back to a new timeline after stealing a top-secret _time machine_? A time machine under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security? So he goes to federal prison and leaves Jessica and whatever kids _alone_ for however long he's locked away? It's all worth it to have Jessica back when he's just going to hurt her and his kids like that?

Is that _love_ , Lucy wonders, not even bothering to wipe away the stream of tears still streaking down her face. _Does_ she love Wyatt? Would she do that for him? Maybe she would, but she'll never really know – the same man she just might love is about to erase that very fact.

And she, Lucy, won't know him at all. She'll just see a crazy felon that comes back in the Lifeboat with Rufus.

Did he think this through even a _little bit_? He's so stupidly reckless and…

And she's angry and she's hurting and in spite of herself, she's still in love with him. Damn him.

God, she _hates_ crying. It has nothing to do with not wanting to be judged as some weak, weepy, overly emotional female in the patriarchy of academia – it just _sucks_. The snot, the swollen eyes, the utter inability to breathe, the headache… It's messy and it's gross and it's painful and it _sucks._ And it never actually fixes anything anyway.

Because she's a mess, and Wyatt's still leaving. She's sitting at home crying her eyes out because she's in love with him and he's still running off to whatever year to erase every memory she ever had of him. Though by now she's half wishing he'd go _faster_ and get it over with just so she's not sitting there blubbering, awash in futility and heartache anymore.

She wonders how it works, to be left behind when they change history. Will she still be in this spot on the couch? Somehow teleported elsewhere instantaneously, to Mason, to Stanford, even to Noah's house or somewhere else? Someday, she'd have to ask Jiya about that one. That is, if she even remembers ever having the thoughts she's currently having.

But she won't, will she? She'll have no reason to remember crying over the man she'll never have known, and certainly not loved, in the first place. Any minute now, the tears and stuffy nose and damp cheeks could disappear as-

Shit.

Minute _. Minutes_. _Twenty_ minutes.

Lucy scrambles for her phone. Twenty-three.

Twenty-three minutes since he'd left. Which means she's screwing up the one last thing she can do for him before he's erased from her memory.

She hastily wipes at her face and sniffles, trying in vain to get herself to some semblance of normal in advance of calling. Blowing her nose doesn't help much either, so she gives up and just scrolls to Agent Christopher's number.

Now it's twenty-four minutes.

She presses the 'call' button.

She hopes Jessica really is worth it.

 **~FIN~**

* * *

 _Just a spur-of-the-moment explanation for those extra four minutes..._


End file.
